Can You Name This Building? (We roofed it!) Hint: The roof does more than keep out water.

It’s not every day you install a roof that will have some sections covered by a beautiful floor and other sections walked on by beautiful people in beautiful clothing!

Usually, the beauty of a commercial roof is more…understated. But this re-roofing and new roof installation project was part of the $100 million redevelopment of the former Crowne Plaza Hotel.

The building is located in one of the country’s 10 most posh neighborhoods and its new plans called for a new rooftop bar, patio, walkways and penthouse level — plus a glass-enclosed elevator to get people there. It was a challenging job that required extreme attention to detail.

Sentry is proud to have been selected from the (very) short list of Atlanta-area roofing contractors who could handle this unique project. 

Did you guess the building? It’s…

The W Atlanta-Buckhead hotel

W Atlanta-Buckhead was a unique and complex job because the rooftop and roofing system were integral parts of the redevelopment.

A roof that’s more than a roof

The roof had to be absolutely perfect. Since portions of the floor of the new rooftop bar, Whiskey Blue, would be covering portions of the roof, that part would no longer be accessible for repairs without ripping up the Whiskey Blue floor and its high-end finishes. So we needed to use materials designed for the extreme long-term and quadruple check that the draining and sealing were flawless. The roofing materials and workmanship also had to be able to withstand all kinds of conditions, including ponding, abuse from unusual rooftop activity (i.e., all those people!), and potential grease and chemicals from the kitchen vents.

We did the work concurrent with the construction of the bar, enclosed walkway and penthouse levels, weaving in our work by collaborating closely with the other crews.

Triple-redundant design and metal work, too

To start, we replaced the original asphalt-based roof on the main roof level with a triple-redundant modified bitumen design. Since the additions included constructing new building structures on the roof, our team was responsible for making sure that the inside the building would stay completely dry during construction — our temporary protection solution did the trick. Once the structures were complete, we installed a red metal roof on the Whiskey Blue level and white TPO on the penthouse level.

We also did the metal work on the elevator shaft that runs along the height of the exterior of the building — that was challenging, given the rigging required to keep our guys safe — and on the enclosed walkway roof as well. And the artificial rooftop grass and trees that you can see through the glass-walled walkway? They’re constructed from shaped foam built over our modified bitumen roof system.

We like the traditional roofing projects we work on every day. And we like the challenging projects like this one, too!